Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Decolonising higher education curricula in South Africa: factoring in archives through public programming initiatives

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Archival Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

South African higher education curricula are largely Eurocentric, to such an extent that indigenous knowledge is marginalised (Horsthemke in Transform High Educ 2(1)–9, 2017). Consequently, the decolonisation of university curricula has become a necessity. The nationwide ‘FeesMustFall’ student protests in 2015 and 2016 have underlined the need to address this matter urgently. Free quality education and the decolonisation of university curricula were among some of the students’ demands (Le Grange in SAJHE 30(2):1–12, 2016). Fundamentally, decolonising curricula involve a serious investigation of history and the strategising of future actions (Ngulube in Historia 47(2):563–582, 2002). Little is known about the potential role of archives in the process of decolonising higher education curricula in South Africa. Perhaps this can be attributed to a lack of awareness about archives and their significance in South Africa (Sulej in ESARBICA J 33:13–35, 2014). This paper explores the role of archives in the decolonisation of higher education curricula in South Africa. It appears that sub-Saharan scholars rarely consult archives (Onyancha et al. in ESARBICA J 32:67–77, 2013). Therefore, public programming is investigated as a means to get more members of the academic community to use archives as centres of critical inquiry. The relevant literature was consulted and discussed. Unique outreach or public programming initiatives will help the academic community to better understand the significance of archives in the decolonisation process.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abdi AA (2003) Apartheid and education in South Africa. West J Black Stud 27(2):89–97

    Google Scholar 

  • Asogwa BE, Ezema JI (2017) Freedom of access to government information in Africa: trends, status and challenges. Rec Manag J 27(3):318–338

    Google Scholar 

  • Badat S (2010) The challenges of transformation in the higher education and training institutions in South Africa. Development Bank of South Africa, Johannesburg

    Google Scholar 

  • Baker K (2015) Adapting the model for information literacy and cultural heritage in Cape Town: investigating user attitudes and perceptions in libraries, museums and archives. M.Phil. Thesis, University of Cape Town

  • Blais G, Enns D (1991) From paper archives to people archives: public programming in the management of archives. Archivaria 31:101–113

    Google Scholar 

  • Boiteau J (2017) The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the pursuit of archival decolonisation. MA Thesis, University of Manitoba/Winnipeg

  • Bradford T (2017) Historians, archivists and the ongoing work of decolonisation. Fonds d’Archives, n. 1 https://fondsdarchives.ca/index.php/fondsdarchives/article/view/3. Accessed 6 Oct 2017

  • Britannica Academic (2018) sv. Colonialism. www.academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/colonialism-western/106074. Accessed 28 Feb 2018

  • British Broadcasting Corporation (2018) South Africa Profile—Timeline. www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14094918 Accessed 28 Feb 2018

  • Butler-Adam J (2016) What really matters for students in South Africa higher education? S Afr J Sci 112:1–2. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2016/a0151 (accessed 15 July 2017)

    Google Scholar 

  • Callinicos L, Odendaal A (1996) Report on archives in South Africa by Luli Callinicos and André Odendaal, conveners of the Archives Sub-committee of the Arts and Culture Task Group (ACTAG). SA Arch J 38:33–49

    Google Scholar 

  • Conway P (1986) Facts and frameworks: an approach to studying the users of archives. Am Arch 49(Fall):393–407

    Google Scholar 

  • Council on Higher Education and Training (2016) South African higher education reviewed—two decades of democracy. CHE, Pretoria

    Google Scholar 

  • Council on Higher Education and Training (2017) Decolonising the curriculum: stimulating debate. Briefly Speak 3:1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Cox RJ (1993) The concept of public memory and its impact on archival public programming. Archivaria 36(Autumn):122–135

    Google Scholar 

  • Department of Higher Education and Training (2017) Universities. http://www.dhet.gov.za/SitePages/UniversityEducation.aspx. Accessed 20 Dec 2017

  • Dominy G (2017) The effects of an administrative and policy vacuum on access to archives in South Africa. Arch Sci 17:393–408

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dowler L (1988) The role of use in defining archival practise and principles: a research agenda for the availability and use of records. Am Arch 51(Winter):74–86

    Google Scholar 

  • Duff WM, Dryden J, Limkilde C, Cherry J, Bogomazova E (2008) Archivists’ views of user based evaluation: benefits, barriers and requirements. Am Arch 71:144–166

    Google Scholar 

  • Ericson TL (1991) Preoccupied with our own gardens: outreach and archivists. Archivaria 31:114–122

    Google Scholar 

  • Finch E (1994) Advocating archives: an introduction to public relations for archivists. Scarecrow Press, Metuchen

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton C, Leibhammer N (eds) (2016) Tribing and untribing the archive: identity and the material record in Southern Kwazulu-Natal in the late independent and colonial periods. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Scottsville

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris V (2002) The archival silver, power, memory and archives in South Africa. Arch Sci 2(1–2):63–86

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris V (2014) Twenty years of post-apartheid archiving: have we reckoned with the past, or has the past reckoned with us? Annual Archives Lecture 06 November 2014. Pretoria, South Africa

    Google Scholar 

  • Higgs P (2016) The African renaissance and the transformation of the higher education curriculum in South Africa. Afr Educ Rev 13(1):87–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Higher Education South Africa (HESA) (2009) HESA strategic framework for the next 10 years: pathways to a diverse and effective South African higher education system. http://www.usaf.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/HESA-Insight-No-1_October-20091.pdf. Accessed 10 Apr 2018

  • Horsthemke K (2004) Indigenous knowledge, truth and reconciliation in South Africa higher education. SAJHE 18(3):65–81

    Google Scholar 

  • Horsthemke K (2017) Transmission and transformation in higher education: indigenisation, internationalisation and transculturally. Transf High Educ 2(1):1–9

    Google Scholar 

  • International Council on Archives (2017) What are archives? https://www.ica.org/en/what-archive. Accessed 15 Mar 2018

  • Jacobs L (2017) Re-conceptualising the role of academics in higher education. M. Phil student project. University of Stellenbosch: unpublished

  • Jimerson RC (2003) Archives and memory. OCLC Syst Serv 19(3):89–95

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kallaway P (2012) The forgotten history of South African education. South Afr Rev Educ 18(1):7–23

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamatula G (2011) Marketing and public programming in records and archives at the Tanzanian Records and Archives Management Department. J S Afr Soc Arch 44(2011):74–89

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamatula G, Mnkeni-Saurombe N, Mosweu O (2013) The role of archives in the promotion of documentary national heritage in Tanzania, South Africa and Botswana. ESARBICA 32:109–127

    Google Scholar 

  • Khupe C, Keane M (2017) Towards an African education research methodology: decolonising new knowledge. Educ Res Soc Change 6(1):25–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kotler P, Lee N (2007) Marketing in the public sector: a roadmap for improved performance. Wharton School of Publishing: New Jersey. Kindle location 4527 of 6620

  • Le Grange L (2016) Decolonising the university curriculum. SAJHE 30(2):1–12

    Google Scholar 

  • Letsekha T (2013) Revisiting the debate on the Africanisation of higher education: an appeal for a conceptual shift. Indep J Teach Learn 8:1–13

    Google Scholar 

  • Lome E, Androsoff A (2017) Archives 101. Engaging post-secondary students with primary sources. Fonds d’ Archives #1: 1–9

  • Malkmus D (2008) Primary resources research and the undergraduate: a transforming landscape. J Arch Organ 6(1–2):47–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Mandam M (2016) Between the public intellectual and the scholar: decolonisation and some post-independence initiatives in African education. Inter Asia Cult Stud 17(1):68–83

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mbembe A (2015) Decolonising knowledge and the question of the archive. http://:wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%/20.pdf/. Accessed 17 Aug 2017

  • McCausland S (2017) Archival public programming. In: MacNeil H, Eastwood T (eds) Currents of archival thinking, 2nd edn. ABC-CLI, Santa Barbara, pp 225–244

    Google Scholar 

  • Menne-Haritz A (2001) Access—the reformulation of an archival paradigm. Arch Sci 1:57–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ministry of Education (2001) National plan for higher education. http://www.cepd.org.za/files/pictures/National%20Plan%20%20for%20Higher%20Education%20in%20South%20Africa.pdf. Accessed 17 Aug 2017

  • Mndawe MW (2017) A critique of Africanised curricula in higher education: possibilities for the African Renaissance. In: Msila V (ed) Decolonising knowledge for Africa’s renewal: examining Africa’s perspectives and philosophies. Kr Publishing, Randburg, pp 201–221

    Google Scholar 

  • Mnjama N (2018) Archival access and public programming. In: Ngulube P (ed) Heritage management and preservation. Pennsylvania, IGI Global, pp 47–68

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Muswede T (2017) Colonial legacies and the decolonisation discourse in post apartheid South Africa—a reflective analysis of student activism in higher education. Afr J Public Aff 9(5):200–210

    Google Scholar 

  • National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (2016) NARSSA Website. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.za/. Accessed 10 July 2017

  • Ndhlovu-Gatsheni S (2017) The long struggle for an African university: the unfinished business of decolonisation. Seminar 5 July 2017, Pretoria, South Africa

  • Ndimande BS (2013) From Bantu education to the fight for socially just education. Equity Excell Educ 46(1):20–35

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nesmith T (2010) Archivists and public affairs: towards a new archival public programming. In: Avery C, Holmund M (eds) Better off forgetting? Essays on archives, public policy and collective memory. University of Toronto, Toronto, pp 169–193

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngoepe M (2017) Archives without archives: a window of opportunity to build an inclusive archive in South Africa. Professorial inaugural lecture, 26 October 2017, Pretoria, University of South Africa

  • Ngoepe M, Keakopa SM (2011) An assessment of the state of national archival and records systems in the ESARBICA region: a South Africa—Botswana comparison. Rec Manag J 21(2):145–160

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngoepe M, Ngulube P (2011) Assessing the extent to which the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa has fulfilled its mandate of taking the archives to the people. Innov J Appropr Librariansh Inf Work South Afr 42:3–22

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngoepe M, Setumu T (2017) Converting oral narratives into written literature: lessons learnt from heritage projects undertaken in the Makgabeng area, Limpopo, South Africa. Mousaion 34(4):148–164

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ngulube P (1999) The marketing of archival services and products in east and southern Africa: opportunities for survival in the next millennium. ESARBICA J 18:19–25

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngulube P (2000) Challenges to preservation of our archival heritage. SASA conference, 11–13 September 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa

  • Ngulube P (2002) Future of the past: access to public archives in southern Africa and challenges to historical research. Historia 47(2):563–582

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngulube P (2017) Embedding indigenous knowledge in library and information science education in Anglophone eastern and southern Africa. Handbook of research on social, cultural and educational considerations for indigenous knowledge in developing countries. IGI Global, Hershey PA, pp 92–115

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Ngulube P, Dube L, Mhlongo M (2015a) Towards a cartography of indigenous knowledge systems in library and information science training and education in Anglophone eastern and southern Africa. Indilinga Afr J Indig Knowl Syst 14(2):145–165

    Google Scholar 

  • Ngulube P, Ngoepe M, Saurombe N, Chaterera F (2015b) Towards a uniform strategy for taking archives to the people in South Africa: can we really build the Tower of Babel? The XXIII ESARBICA Biennial Conference, 8–12 June 2015. Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

    Google Scholar 

  • Oelofsen R (2015) Decolonisation of the African mind and intellectual landscape. Phronimon 16(2):130–146

    Google Scholar 

  • Onyancha OB, Mokwatlo KI, Mnkeni-Saurombe N (2013) An informetrics study of the cited references in archival research in Sub-Saharan Africa: a measure of the archival researchers’ preferences? ESARBICA J 32:67–77

    Google Scholar 

  • Osman F (2017) Moves afoot to decolonise education. Post 14 June 2017

  • Archival Platform (2014) State of the archives: an analysis of South Africa’s national archival system. Archival Platform, Johannesburg

    Google Scholar 

  • Saurombe NP (2016) Public programming of public archives in the East and Southern Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA): towards an inclusive and integrated framework. D.Phil. thesis, University of South Africa

  • Saurombe N, Ngulube P (2016a) Public programming skills of archivists in selected national memory institutions of east and southern Africa. Mousaion 34(1):23–42

    Google Scholar 

  • Saurombe N, Ngulube P (2016b) Perceptions of user studies as a foundation for public programming activities by archivists from east and southern Africa. ESARBICA J 35:29–45

    Google Scholar 

  • Schellnack-Kelly I, Jiyane V (2017) Tackling environmental issues in the digital age through oral histories and oral traditions from the iSimangaliso Wetland. Historia 62(2):112–129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott I, Yeld N, Hendry J (2007) Higher education monitor: a case of improving teaching and learning in South African higher education. www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/HE_Monitor_6_ITLS_Oct2007_0.pdf. Accessed 10 Apr 2018

  • Seabi J, Seedat J, Khoza-Shangase K, Sulivan L (2014) Experiences of university students regarding transformation in South Africa. Int J Educ Manag 28(1):66–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Setumu T (2015) Inclusion of rural communities in the national records system: a case study of Blouberg-Makgabeng-Senwabarwana. J S Afr Soc Arch 48:34–44

    Google Scholar 

  • South African Government (1922) Public Archives Act No 9 of 1922. Republic of South Africa

  • South African Government (1996a) The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act No 108 of 1996. Republic of South Africa

  • South African Government (1996b) National Archives of South Africa Act No. 43 of 1996. Republic of South Africa Government Gazette, vol 451, No. 17471

  • South African Government (1999) National heritage resources Act No 25 of 1999. Republic of South Africa Government Gazette, vol 406, No. 19974

  • South African Government (2000) Promotion of access to information Act No 2 of 2000. Republic of South Africa Government Gazette, vol 39504, No. 1222

  • South Africa History Online (2017) A history of apartheid in South Africa. http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa. Accessed 20 Feb 2018

  • Sulej Z (2014) Access to archives in South Africa in the first 20 years of democracy: is there transformation or deformation? ESARBICA J 33:13–35

    Google Scholar 

  • Tally B, Goldenberg LB (2005) Fostering historical thinking with digitized primary sources. J Res Technol Educ 38(1):1–21

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • University of South Africa (2017) Unisa Decoloniality Summer School. http://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/corporate/default/Colleges/Human-Sciences/News-&-events/Events/Unisa-Decoloniality-Summer-School. Accessed 20 Dec 2017

  • Van der Westhuizen M, Greuel T, Beukes JW (2017) Are we hearing the voices? Africanisation as part of community development. Theol Stud 73(3):4512. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4512 (accessed 15 Oct 2017)

    Google Scholar 

  • Venson SL, Ngoepe M, Ngulube P (2014) The role of public archives in national development in the East and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives. Innovation: Journal of Appropriate Librarianship and Information. Work 48:46–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Yakel E (2004) Information literacy for primary sources: creating a new paradigm for archival research education. OCLC Syst Serv 20(2):61–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yeo G (2005) Understanding users and use: a market segmentation approach. J Soc Arch 26(1):25–53

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 329, Pretoria, South Africa

    Nampombe Saurombe

Authors
  1. Nampombe Saurombe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nampombe Saurombe.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Saurombe, N. Decolonising higher education curricula in South Africa: factoring in archives through public programming initiatives. Arch Sci 18, 119–141 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-018-9289-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-018-9289-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation